Maintaining Weight Loss

Avoiding Weight Ups And Downs
How To Successfully Diet
Exercise Tips
Up With Attitude

Avoiding Weight Ups And Downs

Many people have had the experience of successfully depriving themselves long enough to lose weight. It is a heady experience until the scale shows that you have gained five pounds overnight even though you feel you have eaten sparingly. Such are the woes of the chronic dieter, but help is on the way to smooth these peaks and valleys.

How To Successfully Diet

"Dieting," actually, is not the proper way to describe weight management. How to change your food habits and still love food that is good for you is more accurate. The diet you choose to follow the rest of your life needs to be balanced, varied, and likable. You calmly choose foods that are nutritious most of the time and don't feel great guilt over consuming foods that you don't consider "diet" foods. Because you can have such foods you won't overindulge. You avoid thinking about food all the time by finding enjoyments outside of food. Worrying over the next meal, what will be served at the party and other food obsessions only makes you hungry. It makes you a restrained eater - one who tries to stay in tight control and fears "losing it". Worrying so much over food takes its enjoyment away. If you have followed the diet over time to slowly lose weight, it is second nature by now. You didn't lose weight rapidly and so weight changes will be minimized. Don't weigh yourself daily; once a week is plenty to check your progress.

Exercise Tips

Exercise is the only way to get your body stoked to burn more calories. As you exercise, you will convert fat cells to muscle and that alone will burn many more calories. Your metabolism will burn faster up to 24 hours after an exercise session. Exercise is for life too, so start slow, select activities that you really enjoy and stick with it. Remember, though, that the scale will appear to play "tricks" on you as you exercise more. As you convert fat to muscle the body can actually gain weight, since muscle weighs more than fat.

Up With Attitude

You can see that the diet and exercise plans are as much of an attitude as they are an activity. You need to love and accept yourself and praise yourself for your progress. It will take time to make a philosophical overhaul. You also need to consider the fact that you may have an unrealistic idea of what you should weigh. Chasing that last 5 pounds the rest of your life may not be worth it. For times of the year when you see your weight normally increase, like the holidays, you may need to make some slight adjustments. This does not mean dieting in January. Overeating one day and undereating another is all a part of the normal eating experience. Trust yourself to balance it out by following your appetite.

Fitness and Exercise